Making Cheese

In February, 1980, my Dad was fishing at Castle Rock, and I had nothing to do to make any money, so I got the idea to apply at the local cheese factory for a job.  I was hired by Bob Seymour.  He was the plant manager, and the son-in-law of the owner, Armand Berglund.  I wa sonly able to work on weekends, as I was still in school.  We had to be there by 6:00 am.  The cheesemaker was in much earlier, like 2 or 3 am, to get the process rolling so by the time the rest of us got in, there was cheese to work with.  Mostly we made cheddar, but we also made a vat of Colby once in a while.  It was all physical work, throwing slabs of cheese around, pressing, bagging and boxing 45 lb blocks, etc. 

Cheddar starts out as milk in a tall vat.  I never learned the whole process, but it involves heating the milk up, making it curdle by adding bacteria and renet. The milk forms a custard like consistency, and then we ran large frames with wires strung on them to cut the custard into small pieces.  A bunch of the whey was pumped off the top, and then the cheese and the remaining whey was pumped out of the bottom of the vat into a smaller, lower "working" vat, with a V-shaped screen set in the middle and a motorized power head above the vat..  We would rake it out so it was even along the working vat, then let it settle and drain more whey off.  Eventually, you wind up with a long slab of cheese on each side of the vat.  We had a long handle with two knives spaced about 16 inches apart that we would cut the cheese into slabs with.  You stand on one side of the vat and push the knives through the cheese on the other side.  Then the smaller slabs would be flipped and stacked several times, first two high, then three, then four, and sometimes five.  The cheesemaster would check the whey's acid content periodically, which would determine when how many times and how quickly the slabs would be flipped and stacked.  Then we pulled a machine over to the vat that looked a lot like an old push-style mower.  It had a motor that turned the blades, though, and we would feed the slabs through the cutter, which chopped it up into curds.  Then we would attach a set of mixers to the power unit and send it up and down the vat, stirring the curds as we  spread a couple buckets of salt on the chopped up curds, which added flavor and slowed the bacteria down a lot. 

Next, we would open the end of the vat and attach an elevator/scale unit, and a scraper blade to the power head.  The blade would push a pile of curds off the end of the vat, and they would go up the elevator and dump into square forms.  The forms were lined with a cloth.  The scale would stop the elevator automatically.  Sometimes you had to add a bit more, or take a bit out to get it within the weight window.  One worker ran the scale, and another person took the forms after tehy were filled and flipped the flaps of the liner over to cover the curds and placed a lid on the form.  Then the forms were pushed owns a conveyor track, around a corner to the end of the presses.  Another worker there slid the forms onto the track of the press, flipped it on its side, and stacked them up against the hammer.  Six more forms were lifted up on top of the stack and slid down by the hammer.  A backstop was inserted at the end of the press and then a lever was turned, and hydraulic pressure would move the hammer, squeezing the stack against the backstop.  When the hammer reached the end of its run, the lever was turned to bring it back to its home position, and another form would be added to the stack, and then the stack was pressed again.  Eventually, all six forms would be added, and the hammer would be left pressing the stack.  If it could still reah the end of its run, some empty forms would be added.  Then the cheese woulkd be left alone for an hour or so. 

pumped over to a lower vat